CALL_IS_VSL

R. Byrne: "Creating mind maps or webs is one of my favorite ways to organize ideas and information. I've often had my students create mind maps as an exercise in making visual connections between important concepts, events, and people in a unit of study. The following free tools offer good options for creating mind maps online. "

R. Byrne: "One of the most useful new Add-ons for Google Documents is the EasyBib Bibliography Creator. The EasyBib Bibliography Creator makes it easy to properly cite resources and format a bibliography in APA, MLA, or Chicago style. The screenshots below provide directions for the process. (Click the images to view them in full size)."

Some nice ideas from R. Byrne on how to use comics for courses and activities -- literature, social studies, book reports, expressing feelings (and ideas). He includes 5 free comic-book makers. Some good examples of PBL.

"Reading Bear is a free service that offers narrated lessons on recognizing and pronouncing letters and words. There are also some lessons on prefixes and suffixes. Students can control the pace of each lesson to match their needs. "After each lesson on Reading Bear students can take quizzes to test their skills. The quizzes present a picture and a set of words. Students have to match the correct word to the picture that they see. Through the narrator, students receive instant feedback on each question in the quiz." I am not convinced that these topics are a good idea for K-3, but if this is in your curriculum, this site might be a good option.

R. Byrne: "Over the course of the school year our students create some fantastic digital products. Building a digital portfolio is a great way for students to look back at everything they've done and organize it into a cohesive package. The following five tools are good services for creating digital portfolios." As always, Byrne gives some good brief examples of the kinds of lessons the tools can be used for. He includes Silk, Dropr, Google Sites, Weebly, and eduClipper. Some instructional videos included.

R. Byrne: "Code Maven and Game Maven are interactive programming tutorials from Crunchzilla. Code Maven and Game Maven use the same style as the popular Code Monster javascript programming tutorial. That style is to present a piece of code with instructions on one side of the screen while providing a visual of the outcome on the other side of the screen." Students can learn how to program at their own pace. Great for teens into gaming -- or those who might like to be.

"The video is intended to raise awareness of the impact of plastic shopping bags on the environment. Perhaps after watching this video in your classroom you could challenge students to think of alternatives to plastic bags or ask them to develop ideas for reusing and recycling plastic bags. You could also have students further study the impact of plastic bags on the environment. To demonstrate the information they find, have them create real documentaries about the impact of plastic bags on the environment. WeVideo is a good tool for creating documentary videos. "

R. Byrne: "Keith Hughes, teacher and producer of the popular Hip Hughes History series of videos, recently released a good video for new teachers. Ten Solutions for Misbehavior offers practical advice for new teachers. "My addition to this list comes from the first principal that I worked under, "don't openly engage in power struggles with students."

Get onto Keith Hughes' channel. He makes history absolutely compelling in short videos for high school students. These videos may help your students get into their social studies subjects and they model a way to bring the past to life. Your students may want to produce some themselves. t/h R.Byrne

R. Byrne: "Odyssey.js is a new open source map creation tool from CartoDB. Through Odyssey.js you can create mapped stories in three formats; slide, scroll, and torque. In all three formats viewers will see a location on a map along with the text and pictures of your story. The slide and scroll formats are fairly straight-forward, you click through slides or scroll through a story. The torque format allows you to connect elements of your map to a timeline." This tool could be used to map history, parts of novels, the immigration of peoples, the expansion of wars, etc. Mapping and visualization are always good to enhance learning.

R. Byrne: "A featured resource on MoMA Learning is this video containing five tips for teaching with works of art. The video not only lists the tips, it contains examples of using these tips to teach art history and art appreciation lessons to students." Most of the great art museums and natural history museums of the world have websites with instructional materials of very high quality. It's worth some time to explore what they offer and figure out how to adapt their resources for your classes. One of the other excellent resources on MoMA Learning is this glossary of art terms. In many cases the definitions in the glossary contain links to multiple examples of each term. You might also like: Three Good Places to Find Art Lessons Art Babble - Videos and Lessons In Art History Read and Download 250+ Art Books from the Getty Museum 390 Free Online Art History Books Linkwithin 33 at 7:05 PM Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Labels: Art, Art History, art lessons, Free Technology For Teachers, MoMA, MoMA Learning Links to this post Create a Link Newer Post Older Post Home LinkWithin Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger... TW FreeTech Banner Dark Blue (1) freetech4teachers HelloTalk new seesaw-468-60 Midwest Teachers Institute Banner 468x60 isd-richard-byrnes-ad-2014 ettipad-boston15-CFP-200x200 prepfactory DE_WILKES_EDGE_AD_200x200.jpg Browse The Archives ► 2015 (707) ▼ 2014 (1243) ► December (115) ► November (86) ► October (112) ► September (116) ► August (102) ▼ July (114) ► Jul 31 (5) ► Jul 30 (4) ► Jul 29 (2) ► Jul 28 (4) ► Jul 27 (3) ► Jul 26 (2) ► Jul 25 (5) ► Jul 24 (5) ► Jul 23 (4) ► Jul 22 (5) ► Jul 21 (5) ► Jul 20 (2) ► Jul 19 (2)

"The Council of the Great City Schools' parent roadmaps in English language arts/literacy provide guidance to parents about what their children will be learning and how they can support that learning in grades K-8. These parent roadmaps for each grade level also provide three-year snapshots showing how selected standards progress from year to year so that students will be college and career ready upon their graduation from high school." These roadmaps should be very useful for teachers as well as parents. Also available at the site in Spanish. Roadmaps are for math and language arts, K-12.

Has brief descriptions for each grade, K-12, short suggestions for things parents can do to help children learn at home, and topics for possible parent-teacher conferences.

Google is offering Add-ons that will make this online tool more comparable to the features of MS Word or Excel. For example, use Gliffy for charts and diagrams, Track Changes in four colors (without resort to the font formatting toolbar), grammar check, and use templates and bibliography styles. This article highlights and describes some of the apps.

"Web-based games can prove to be a treasure trove of learning opportunities, and there are a variety of content-areas, age ranges, and skill levels to choose from. The true pay dirt for browser-based learning games can be found on large online digital game hubs. Here are 10 game hubs players that teachers can use to as one tool in their arsenal." By R. Schaaf. Includes PBS Kids and BBC Schools: Games. Mostly explores K-6, but some sites have activities for older kids too.

R. Stannard shows how to use ELT Pics, which is hosted by Flickr. You can also get an email feed to show pictures as they are updated. A nice way to garner resources for writing or student projects. Pictures are crowd-sourced, and curated by EFL teachers. I use pictures often for teaching writing: description, emotions, cultural comparisons, etc.

You will need to use a rubric app (freely available) to set up a rubric in your Google Drive at Spreadsheets.

Defines 3 types of bilinguals. Helpful in defining what your students needs might be.

Archive and sort your favorite bookmarks. I use Diigo for the CALL-IS Virtual Software Library. Anyone can join the related group and add to the bookmarks.

Our pedagogical imperative is to let a course unfold according to the whim and determination of the group - to replace teacher-as-content with learning-community-as-content-maker. Doesn't this replace the content-as-authority with the random knowledges of various members of the group? How does "whim" become "content"? Wouldn't it be better to start with actual, factual knowledge? on Dec 09, 14 - Edit - Remove This is at the heart of what Freire calls "co-intentional education," in which "Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge." The collective knowledge of a group of students will almost always exceed the expertise of one instructor. The last sentence is misleading -- not what Freire says. If the teacher is not included as part of the task, the knowledge of the group of students probably doesn't exceed the instructor's expertise.